Good afternoon
Baltimore Nonviolence Center:
My name is Jaime D. Sigaran and I volunteer with the
Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition and Progressive Maryland. We are campaigning
to add a transit ballot question in November's general election targeting
Baltimore City voters. The question would ask whether voters support the
creation of a regional transit authority that would provide critical funding
and address transit needs for Baltimore communities.
Could you share this public transit petition with your
network and membership by July 15th? Our deadline to collect 10,000
signatures is coming up (July 27, 2020) and the Baltimore Nonviolence Center is a key potential
ally.
- Link to Electronic Petition: https://www.md-petition.com/invite/BTEC.php
- Here is a toolkit we created with graphics and sample
messaging. This includes petition ask, flyer, and summary of the amended charter.
Baltimore
Nonviolence Center is a leading voice for the grassroots movement
and activist community. Today, the Baltimore region needs better transit that
aims to reduce racial barriers, improve the health of our environment, and
provide economic opportunity to combat homelessness and end poverty. We value
your organization's efforts to inspire action so every Baltimore City resident,
regardless of zip code or neighborhood or economic status, has greater mobility
to lead healthy and productive lives.
Your support in sharing the petition through newsletters,
social media, or other digital format will be greatly appreciated. Let me know
if you have any questions.
Very Respectfully,
P.S. Check out this letter to the editor I wrote in the Baltimore Sun
about ways we can support job-enabling transit for all. And another full-length
Op-Ed featured in StreetsBlog USA here.
Jaime
D. Sigarán
M: (240) 593-3433
Thursday, July 02, 2020
Is the
Nation Opening Its Soul?
Change seems to be coming from multiple directions, both outside
and within the corridors of political and economic power, as our ignorance
shatters and we wake up.
commondreams.org
Not only are statues of
Confederate generals finally coming down, but Christopher Columbus—colonialist
conqueror extraordinaire—apparently has also had his day, with his statues
coming down all over the place. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Topple a few statues, remove
some iconic names from American institutions . . . and the ghosts of the past
start to escape from history, filling the present moment. It’s called
awareness.
Too much awareness can feel
like chaos. Not surprisingly, a lot of people would prefer to stick with the
old historical narrative, the one that’s so tried and true: This is the land of
the free, the home of the brave, the birthplace of democracy. God bless
America! (And forget about slavery, Native American genocide, racism, packed
prisons, nukes, endless war, etc.)
The question of the moment is
whether this narrative is gone for good. Are we merely in the process of making
some superficial adjustments or has the national soul truly torn itself open?
Will we stop short —once again—of creating a society of compassionate equality?
Will we eventually (as soon as possible) retreat to another narrative of
American exceptionalism and . . . uh, white power? Or are we in the process of
real change?
I confess to being an
optimist. The ghosts of the past that are returning to the present moment could
be the harbingers of unimaginable change. Even the changes that seem
trivial—rebranding Aunt Jemima pancake mix, for instance—have roots that go
deep into the national identity and its sources of power.
Consider, for instance, the
downfall of Woodrow Wilson,
former U.S. president who was also president of Princeton University for eight
years. Announcing that Wilson’s name would be removed from Princeton’s public
policy school, current president Christopher Eisgruber said, according to BBC
News: “Wilson’s racism was significant and consequential even by the standards
of his own time.”
Wow, that’s no small deal,
considering how low the standards for racial stupidity were in the early 20th
century. Nonetheless, he explained, Wilson—whose legacy includes barring black
students from attending Princeton, who was a friend of the Ku Klux Klan—was
revered by Princeton for over a century “not because of, but without regard to
or perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism.”
Princeton, he went on, “is
part of an America that has too often disregarded, ignored, or excused racism,
allowing the persistence of systems that discriminate against black people.”
So America’s racist ignorance
is over? Examples keep pouring in. Not only are statues of Confederate generals
finally coming down, but Christopher Columbus — colonialist conqueror
extraordinaire — apparently has also had his day, with his statues coming down
all over the place. And a particularly racist statue of Theodore
Roosevelt, depicting the conquering hero grandly astride his horse
as a black man and a Native American walk humbly beside (and behind) him, will
be removed from in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
And latter-day
colonialist John Wayne,
king of the Hollywood cowboys and icon of America’s conquest of the Wild West,
is in trouble in Orange County, Calif., where Democratic political leaders are
calling for the renaming of John Wayne Airport, thanks to the “resurfacing” of
a 1971 Playboy interview, in which he said: “I believe in white supremacy until
the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving
authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”
A fascinating irony about
these words is the way they bounce back to the speaker, whose ignorance of and
indifference to his country’s horrific history of racism indicates he was not
“educated to a point of responsibility.”
And then there are the brand
names that are suddenly gone, so to speak, with the wind. These include Aunt
Jemima, a product that dates back to 1893, whose initial model, a woman named
Nancy Green, was a former slave. Other brands with stereotypical symbols that
are on their way out include Uncle Ben’s rice, Eskimo pies, Cream of Wheat and
Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup. “Retiring these products is not ‘political
correctness,’” Katha Pollitt writes
at The Nation, “it is the removal of a profound racial insult from our grocery
stores and kitchen tables.”
And, oh yeah, speaking of
Gone with the Wind, that 1939 movie of antebellum nostalgia has been taken
off HBO for
the time being. Its return will include “a discussion of its historical
context,” according to a network spokesperson. And the reality TV show “Cops”
is gone after 32 seasons, depriving Americans of the chance to watch the
law-and-order game in progress from the comfort of their sofas.
At a deeper level, police
accountability is no longer a matter turned over to the police
unions. Derek Chauvin, killer of George Floyd, has been charged with
second-degree murder, as have the other officers present at the scene of his
death. Police departments in California, Texas, Nevada and Washington, D.C.
have banned the police use of chokeholds. And the movement to defund
militarized police forces, diverting the money to other means of establishing
social order, is gaining a political foothold, not only in Minneapolis (ground
zero) but New York City.
All of which will hardly
matter at all if the changes stop here. The undoing of American racism—of its
racist infrastructure—isn’t a simple matter of making reforms or righting a few
wrongs. The above changes only matter if they indicate a national re-beginning.
As social theorist and author
Joe Feagin put it in a Truthout interview:
“. . . in their individual and collective protests and revolts against racial
oppression African Americans have long pressed for—indeed, arguably
invented—the authentic liberty-and-justice-for-all values that have gradually
become more central to this country. The white male ‘founders’ version of
‘liberty and justice’ values were inauthentic, as they actually had in mind
freedom for (propertied) white men.”
What matters about the
present moment is that change seems to be coming from multiple directions, both
outside and within the corridors of political and economic power, as our
ignorance shatters and we wake up.
Robert Koehler is
an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer.
His new book, Courage Grows
Strong at the Wound is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his
website at commonwonders.com.
Our work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish
and share widely.
Donations can be sent to
Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at]
comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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